The End Game

“So is my news.”

He knew about Trafford’s meeting with the other muckety-mucks and the vice president, not surprised Callan Sloane was now loaded for bear, given the explosion at Bayway.

Ten minutes later he parked in the orange lot on the CIA campus and hurried toward the new headquarters building, not even glancing at Kryptos—Jim Sanborn’s encrypted, elusive cypher-sculpture. When he passed the wall of stars, all he could think about was seeing Nessa’s name on that wall, a single star to show her worth to the Agency. Like her father’s star.

When he stood in front of Gladys, with her double strand of pearls and gray silk blouse and ladylike pumps, he smiled. All the analysts liked her; she was always in their corner. She said immediately, “Is Vanessa all right?”

It hurt to say the words. “It’s still uncertain” was all he could manage.

“All of us are praying for her. Now go in, Carl.” As he walked past, she handed him a folder. “I don’t know what it’s all about, but like I told you, it’s big. Good luck.”

Director of Intelligence Templeton “Temp” Trafford stood in the window overlooking the CIA campus. A light rain had begun to fall, and the window was misting. Trafford was always impeccably dressed, but this morning, meeting with the VP, he was more formal than usual. Carl recognized the silk tie and polished presidential-seal cuff links Trafford kept in his lower drawer, next to the Grey Goose vodka.

Trafford turned. “Is Vanessa okay?”

Stiff back, stiff voice. “She’s back in surgery. Her doctors—they don’t know, or won’t say.”

“How did Spenser find out she was a spy?”

“A text from me. Spenser heard the phone ding. He lost it, shot her. Look, Temp, she managed to tell me about an assassination attempt before she coded, but not the target, or targets, not the where. Do you know anything about this?”

Trafford said, “Yes, partly. We’ve received word of a major assassination threat, so maybe it’s the same one, I’m not certain.”

“Who?”

“The vice president, Callan Sloane. Possibly others as well, still unidentified.”

Carl couldn’t believe it.

Trafford drew in a deep breath. “I imagine her buddy in the Mossad tipped her off. It gets worse. The assassin is Zahir Damari.”

Carl whistled. “Damari. Who put out the contract?”

Trafford said, “Mossad believes it’s Iran, so that means it’s probably Hezbollah, since they’ve been threatened by her from the begi

“As for Hezbollah, they’re particularly dangerous, since they have no desire for a peaceful world, only chaos and destruction and anarchy in the West, well, and the world, if they could pull it off, and the takeover of Shia.

“Callan has always preached no nukes in Iran, so obviously they would want deniability. Her ties to Israel aside, all the terrorist states also are well aware of her disagreement with the president on the peace talks. To have her eliminated, they’d cheer.”

Carl said, “But if it’s proved they paid to have her assassinated, don’t they understand the president would be forced to retaliate? Big-time?”

“But retaliate against whom, exactly? Don’t forget, Carl, Hezbollah gives them plausible deniability. So the president hits Lebanon, so what? Tehran gets off scot-free and without their biggest roadblock.

“In addition, we’re nearly certain now that the man calling himself Darius is Zahir Damari. The photos Vanessa took of him match body type, height, and skin tone, plus the timing’s right. Did he change his face when he went to Matthew Spenser? We don’t know, so that makes the facial parameters sketchy. And as you know, Damari is a quick-change artist.”

Carl said, “Well, if Darius is indeed Damari and he managed to get himself embedded in COE, the FBI can nail him with this recent photo. Their guys Savich and Drummond have been working on a supplement to the NGA database.”

Temp said, “Before Bayway, Spenser never killed anyone. Why the sudden change? I think Damari changed it, somehow spurred Spenser to more violent, more dramatic action, using one of his own coin bombs, or perhaps only a small portion of it, if all the hype as to its power is true. There’s more. Unverified from the Mossad is that it’s not only Callan who’s targeted by Damari, maybe even someone more important.”

“The only person more important than Callan Sloane is the president.” Carl was frankly disbelieving. “No state would dare assassinate a president of the United States. The fallout would be catastrophic.”

Temp said, “You know as well as I do, Carl, that many terrorist organizations, like ISIS and Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, would like to bomb the world back to the Stone Age and reduce civilization to rubble. Their only goal is to be the last ones standing. Question: can Spenser’s bomb accomplish this for them?”

Carl paused. Given Bayway, and positing that only a very small portion of one of Spenser’s small bombs, then yes.

“Temp, this is very scary.”

“At least now we have a visual on Damari, Carl, and with that we can stop him, hopefully before he can steal one of Spenser’s bombs and get it to Iran and Hezbollah.” A pause, then, “You think we can catch him, Carl? In time?”

“With all our agencies focused on Damari, I’m hopeful.”

Temp looked decidedly happier. “Yes, of course you’re right. We stop Damari, we get our hands on Spenser’s gold-coin bombs, and you know what? No one will care that we had a CIA operative undercover on U.S. soil.”

Carl knew his boss very well indeed. A master of justification and strategy. He said, “Yes, we must accomplish both those things. And you’re right, if we do, all our sins will be forgiven. And we might save the world while we’re at it.”

Temp didn’t laugh, he was too deep in plots, reeling out scenarios in his mind. “But here’s the thing, Carl, the vice president wants names in this organization by tonight, or heads will roll. And that means confessing we know all the players because we had Vanessa embedded with them.

“I like this job, and that means if I have a chance of keeping it, when Vanessa is out of surgery we’ve got to find out everything she knows. You know there’s more, there’s always more. When she is able, you need to find out what these fanatics are pla

Carl said, “When Matthew Spenser and Zahir Damari find out Vanessa’s still alive, you know they’re going to want to kill her.”

“Of course, of course. I’ll send agents over now to cover her. Carl, you know once this all shakes out I’ll have to testify in front of Congress and they will want names. It could come out that she designed the COE bombs, all for a good reason, of course, getting the technology behind those gold-coin bombs, and that might make them back off a bit, but I hate to take the chance. On the plus, she did confirm COE is pla

“Now you’ve got to get back to Vanessa, give me more to work with. Surely she knows where they’re headed, their next target, and how Damari is going to kill the vice president. And ears to the ground—is he indeed targeting someone else?”

Carl splayed his hands on the desktop, leaned in close. “Listen, Temp, Vanessa might die, that’s how badly wounded she is.” He felt tears burn his eyes. “Don’t you understand? I don’t give a rat’s ass if Sloane finds out we’ve been operating on American soil if Vanessa dies.”

“I understand, Carl.” Then Trafford paused for a moment, and Carl realized he was seeing a brilliant mind come up with a solution. He waited.